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South Africa’s WhereIsMyTransport has raised GB£560,000 (US$712,000) from the Global Innovation Fund, to enable it to expand its public transport mapping solution to other cities around the country and beyond.

WhereIsMyTransport officially launched its formal and informal public transport mapping solution in mid-2016, having raised a GBP1.165 million (US$1.536 million) seed round from Goodwell Investments, Omidyar Network and Horizon Ventures.

The investment funded a new transit API – an open information platform that collates transit data for formal and informal services and combines it with analytics capability and communication tools; for use by transport operators, municipalities, among others.

The startup completed mapping Cape Town’s formal and informal public transport network in February this year; followed shortly thereafter by maps of Gaborone, Botswana, and East London, South Africa. Work is currently ongoing on a number of other cities primarily around South Africa, and beyond.

WhereIsMyTransport has now secured GB£560,000 (US$712,000) from the Global Innovation Fund to continue its work in mapping the transport networks of cities’ around South Africa, but also further afield. The deal marks the Fund’s first investment in South Africa.

“We’re really excited by this first investment in South Africa. We saw a lot of potential in the team […] and we really think informal transport is a critical part of development, and enables inclusive growth,” said Jocelyn Cheng, investment director at the Global Innovation Fund.

“We think there’s a lot of scale potential for WhereIsMyTransport both in South Africa and outside the country. Also, the open data element means great growth potential.”

By collected and providing this data to relevant parties, the Fund says WhereIsMyTransport is taking on an important development role in ensuring better services are available to lower income populations.

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